Has Industrialization Diminished the Well-Being of Developing Nations and are Industrialized Countries Responsible?
Guest post by: Indur M. Goklany
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A basic contention of developing countries (DCs) and various UN bureaucracies and multilateral groups during the course of International negotiations on climate change is that industrialized countries (ICs) have a historical responsibility for global warming. This contention underlies much of the justification for insisting not only that industrialized countries reduce their greenhouse gas emissions even as developing countries are given a bye on emission reductions, but that they also subsidize clean energy development and adaptation in developing countries. [It is also part of the rationale that industrialized countries should pay reparations for presumed damages from climate change.]
Based on the above contention, the Kyoto Protocol imposes no direct costs on developing countries and holds out the prospect of large amounts of transfer payments from industrialized to developing countries via the Clean Development Mechanism or an Adaptation Fund. Not surprisingly, virtually every developing country has ratified the Protocol and is adamant that these features be retained in any son-of-Kyoto.
For their part, UN and other multilateral agencies favor this approach because lacking any taxing authority or other ready mechanism for raising revenues, they see revenues in helping manage, facilitate or distribute the enormous amounts of money that, in theory, should be available from ICs to fund mitigation and adaptation in the DCs.
However, as Henry Shue, an Oxford ethicist and apparently a strong believer in the notion that ICs have a historical responsibility for global warming, notes, “Calls for historical responsibility in the context of climate change are mainly calls for the acceptance of accountability for the full consequences of industrialization that relied on fossil fuels.” [Emphasis added.] But the fundamental premise behind this notion of historical responsibility is that the full consequences of fossil fuel based economic development — synonymous with industrialization — are negative. But is this premise valid?
In fact, by virtually any objective measure of human well-being — e.g., life expectancy; infant, child and maternal mortality; prevalence of hunger and malnutrition; child labor; job opportunities for women; educational attainment; income — humanity is far better off today that it was before the start of industrialization.
That human well-being has advanced with economic development is clearly true for industrialized countries. The figure below for the U.S., a surrogate for industrialized countries, shows that life expectancy — perhaps the single most important indicator of human well-being — and GDP per capita — the best single measure for material well-being — increased through the 20th century, even as CO2 emissions, population, and material, metals, and organic chemical use increased.
But what about the net effect of economic development on developing countries?
Indeed, human well-being has also advanced for developing countries. Consider, for example, that:
- The proportion of the developing world’s population living in absolute poverty (i.e., living on less than $1.25 per day in 2005 dollars), was halved from 52 percent to 26 percent between 1981 and 2005. Ironically, higher food prices, partly because of the diversion of crops to biofuels in response to climate change policies, helped push 130-155 million people into absolute poverty in 2008. This is equivalent to 2.5–3.0% of the developing world’s population.
- The proportion of the developing world’s population suffering from chronic hunger had declined from around 30-35 percent in 1969-1971 to 16 percent in 2003-2005. It has since increased to 18% —thanks, once again, in part to climate change policies designed to displace fossil fuels with biofuels (see here, p. 10-11). The UN Food and Agricultural Organization estimates that such policies helped increase the number of people in the developing world suffering from chronic hunger by 75 million in 2007 compared to the 2003-2005 period.
- Life expectancy in developing countries increased from 25-30 years in 1900 to 41 years in the early 1950s to 69 years today.
- Child labor in low income countries declined from 30 to 18 percent between 1960 and 2003.
Such improvements in human well-being in both developing and industrialized countries can be ascribed to the cycle of progress composed of the mutually reinforcing, co-evolving forces of economic growth, technological change and freer trade (see here, pp. 29–33). And fossil fuels have been integral to each facet of this cycle. Without the energy generated by fossil fuels, economic development would be much lower, many of the technologies that we take for granted and have come on line since the dawn of industrialization (e.g., devices that directly or indirectly use electricity or fossil fuels) would have been stillborn, and the current volume of internal and external trade would be impossible to sustain. Even trade in services would be substantially diminished, if not impossible, without energy to generate electricity to power lights, computers, and telecommunications.
In fact, no human activity is possible without energy. Every product we make, move or use requires energy. Even human inactivity cannot be sustained without energy. A human being who is merely lying around needs to replenish his energy just to keep basic bodily functions operating. The amount of energy needed to sustain this is called the basal metabolic rate (BMR). It takes food to replace this energy. Insufficient food, which is defined in terms of the BMR, leads to starvation, stunting, and a host of other physical and medical problems, and eventually death.
Following is a sampling of fossil fuel dependent technologies that have helped advance specific facets of human well-being:
- Hunger. Global food production has never been higher than it is today due to fertilizers, pesticides, irrigation, and farm machinery. But fertilizers and pesticides are manufactured from fossil fuels, and energy is necessary to run irrigation pumps and machinery. The entire suite of technologies that are called the Green Revolution is based on energy. And in today’s world, willy-nilly, energy for the most part means fossil fuels. Additional CO2 in the atmosphere has most likely also contributed to higher food production. Another factor in keeping a check on food prices and reducing hunger is trade within and between countries which enables food surpluses to be moved to food deficit areas. But it takes fossil fuels to move food around in the quantities and the speed necessary for such trade to be an integral part of the global food system, as it indeed is. Moreover, fossil fuel dependant technologies such as refrigeration, rapid transport, and plastic packaging, ensure that more of the crop that is produced is actually consumed. That is, they increase the overall efficiency of the food production system, which also helps reduce food prices and contain hunger worldwide. See here.
- Health. Having sufficient quantity of food is the first step to a healthy population. It’s not surprising that hunger and high mortality rates go hand in hand. In addition, even the most mundane medical and public health technologies depend on energy, most of which is derived from fossil fuels. Such technologies include heating for sterilization; pumping water from treatment plants to consumers and sewage from consumers to treatment plants; and transporting and storing vaccines, antibiotics, and blood. In addition, energy is necessary to operate a variety of medical equipment (e.g., x-rays, electrophoresis, and centrifuges); or undertake a number of medical procedures. Moreover, economic surpluses generated by greenhouse gas producing activities in the US (and other industrialized countries) have helped create technologies to enable safer drinking water and sanitation; treat diseases such as AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis; and increase life expectancies through vaccinations and improvements in nutrition and hygiene. See here.
- Child Labor. Fossil fuel powered machinery has not only made child labor obsolete in all but the poorest societies, but it allows children to be children and, equally importantly, to be more educated in preparation for a more fulfilling and productive life.
- Equal Opportunity for Women and the Disabled. But for home appliances powered for the most part by electricity, more women would be toiling in the home. Moreover, power tools and machinery allow women, the disabled and the weak to work on many tasks that once would have been reserved, for practical purposes, for able-bodied men.
- Education. Today’s populations are much more educated and productive than previous ones in large part due to the availability of relatively cheap fossil fuel generated electrical lighting. And education is a key factor contributing not only to economic development and technological innovation but also personal fulfillment.
In addition, a substantial share of the income of many developing countries comes directly or indirectly from trade, tourism, developmental aid (to the tune of at least $2.3 trillion over the decades), and remittances ($328 billion in 2008 alone) from industrialized countries. Much of this would have been impossible but for the wealth generated in industrialized countries by fossil fuel powered economic development. This economic development also allowed the US (and other developed countries) to offer humanitarian aid to developing countries in times of famine, drought, earthquakes, floods, cyclones, tsunamis and other disasters. Moreover, such aid would have been virtually impossible to deliver in large quantities or in a timely fashion absent fossil fuel fired transportation. Similarly, it would be impossible to sustain the amount of trade and tourism that occurs today without fossil fuels.
Clearly, fossil fuels have advanced human well-being in both industrialized and developing countries. The claim that the net effect of fossil fuels has been detrimental to either group is unsubstantiated.
Remarkably, virtually all the technologies noted above were conceived, and developed in the industrialized countries, and enabled in large part by the wealth generated from the direct or indirect use of fossil fuels and other greenhouse gas generating activities. In fact, because of the diffusion and active transfer of technologies from industrialized to developing countries, the latter are far ahead of today’s industrialized countries at equivalent levels of economic development.
- In 2006, when GDP per capita for low income countries was $1,330 (in 1990 International dollars, adjusted for purchasing power), their life expectancy was 60.4 years. But the US first reached this level in 1921, when its GDP per capita was $5,300. See here (pp. 20-21).
- Even Sub-Saharan Africa, the world’s developmental laggard, is today ahead of where the U.S. used to be. In 2006, its per capita GDP was at the same level as the U.S. in 1820 but the U.S. did not reach Sub-Saharan Africa’s current infant mortality level until 97 years later in 1917, and its current life expectancy until 1902. That is, with respect to infant mortality, Sub-Saharan Africa is 92 years ahead of the US’s pace! With respect to life expectancy, it is 104 years ahead.
Thus, empirical data do not support the underlying premise that industrialization of today’s developed countries has caused net harm to developing countries. In fact, a major harm to developing countries seems to have resulted, in part from climate change policies instituted in industrialized countries. As noted above, information from the World Bank and the Food and Agricultural Organization suggests that no thanks to climate change policy, two of mankind’s signal achievements of the 20th century, namely, the reduction of poverty and hunger in developing countries, are in danger of being retarded if not reversed. Although not addressed above, a third signal achievement of mankind is the almost-plateauing of human demand for cropland, which is the major source of threats to species and biodiversity. But this too is in danger of being overwhelmed now that climate change policies encourage the cultivation of energy crops.
Had it not been for progress and economic surpluses in industrialized countries fueled for the most part by fossil fuels, what would the developing world’s level of human well-being be today? For example, Bangladesh’s life expectancy has gone up from 35 years in the 1940s to 61 now. Its hunger and malnutrition rates would undoubtedly be far higher as agricultural yields would be lower. It would be hard to even list all the ways in which Bangladesh and other developing countries have benefited.
As noted at Reason on-line:
Who knows, even if one assumes that the purported damages from climate change indeed come to pass —there are good reasons to believe that the IPCC has overestimated the impacts of climate change (see here and here) — that a full accounting of the benefits and costs from industrialization may not reveal that developing countries owe developed countries for a net improvement in their well-being!
To summarize, industrialized countries indeed have a historical responsibility for industrialization. But industrialization has been a net boon to humanity not only for industrialized countries but developing countries as well. The real problem may well not be climate change but ill-considered climate change policies that would use crops for energy production thereby increasing hunger, poverty, and the threat to biodiversity.
Now it may be argued that I am ignoring the future impacts of climate change which may tilt the balance so that industrialization, instead of being a net positive turns into a net negative. But as noted by the Economist, which supports the notion that greenhouse gases should be curbed, projections about the future impact of climate change are “no more than educated guesses”, and this is being charitable (see, for instance, here, here, here, and here). Without belaboring this point any further, a little education can be a dangerous thing.
Excellent Article.
Too bad so many people in Media and Politics are busy biting the industrial hand that feeds them.
It also put the lie to recent reports from the various AID NGOs that “Climate Change” is already killing millions – it seems that “Climate Change Policies” are already killing millions with food and energy poverty… Doesn’t it?
BTW (and OT): Arctic Sea Ice is on a rocket upwards REF: http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm
Anthony,
Where are the results of the Caption Competition!!
Indur M. Goklany:
Very informative post. I hope it gets wide readership.
I would think the cause of the inequity can be traced to the liberals keeping the other world countries down. Just think what Africa could be with some coal fired power plants, they have lots of coal, and a few DDT factories to rid them of the scourge of malaria, DDT is easy to make.
A few modern improvements and life for the people would dramatically improve.
Instead these countries are left with burning agricultural waste, because they have no technology to do other wise, live in shacks and have no real health care. They cook and heat with wood or charcoal. In case you want to check on the agricultural fires burning worldwide … here is the site that reduces the data … http://firefly.geog.umd.edu/firemap/
I bet all those massive field clearing agricultural fires doesn’t help the global warming hoaxers case, maybe that’s why you didn’t know.
Those countries who took up technology are generally doing quite well, although their governments tend to enslave the people, which keeps them down.
A little known study by the Energy and Security Group, a small woman-owned consulting firm, found that in 91 developing countries, not only does an investment in energy increase material well being, life expectancy, etc., it increases political stability. A quote from the study: “A one ton of oil equivalent per capita increase in energy consumption [i.e., a gallon per day] increases the odds of peace by a factor of 2.5.” Less you conclude that this is some right wing think tank, the firm’s customers include the UN, UN Foundation, World Bank, Organization of American States, U.S. DOE, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Climate Institute, and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. The report can be found at
http://www.aeaiinc.com/reports/Energy_and_Country_Instability.pdf
I have asuggestion; I am sure the developing and underdeveloped countires of the world will embrace the idea.
We will stop using fossils for either energy or raw industrial materials; and we will destroy all the products we have used those materials to produce; including all the advabces in medical products and procedures; food production; literally everything the industrialized world has developed that has destroyed the prisitne globe; we will destroy and eliminate for ever; so everyone can go back to doing whatever they were doing before we got out of hand.
That sounds fair to me.
Many of the have nots of the world, wouldn’t even have what they have if it wasn’t for wetsern civilisation. So get off our backs; we have used those resources to make it possible for you people to live in whatever you have built for yourselves.
But at the same time; we would welcome you to make use of what we have developed to pull yourselves out of the dark ages.
Well that’s just a suggestion.
Maybe they could just have tea and crumpets at Copenhagen and all go home and get to work.
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Indur:
Great post. The Club of Rome doom-sayers of the late 60’s were completely wrong as was their spiritual father, Thomas Malthus. The exploitation of mechanization and energy has allowed us to practically feed the world and produce everything needed to prolong and enhance life. Until the dawn of the industrial revolution, we needed 90% of the population to be engaged in agriculture to keep the 10% in manufacturing, science, medicine, law, teaching… to keep them fed. Today we do that with a little over one half of one percent. China still has 40% of their population farming. India is 60%. Much of Africa is in the 80-90% range. Green policies are going to kill billions and return the rest of us to subsistence farming.
I am an underdeveloped country with just a sandy beach and a few palm trees. The only people around are naked people sunning themselves. You are going to give me money? What’s not to like?
I second both Tarpon and Noblesse Oblige’s sentiments. I’ve often wondered how it is that so much of the bleeding heart portion of the west blindly skims over the fact that the current political climate surrounding energy conservation is a fantastic tool to practice social darwinism on people who are a little more tan than the average northern European. What a nightmare, if, God forbid, Africa has an industrial revolution and starts using their own ample resources and incredibly rich agriculture belt. The mind boggles at the thought of what a little industrial development in the developing world would do to the lifestyle of the hemp-wearing set among the already-had’s.
All very cogent statements, not to mention that inexpensive energy allows for, and naturaly creates a desireable reduction in population explosion, as the need for physical labor for survival is reduced. A sucessfull economy has the capacity to deal with particulate pollution, water needs, and land use issues that are the real enviremental needs of a developed or developing culture.
CO2 currently grows the same amount of food with 20% less land and water then if CO2 were reduced 100 ppm to preindustrial levels.
Elevated CO2 may have already prevented WW3, but if the enviremental extremists/socialist have their way, those policys may well lead the world to such a war. I am not a person prone to exaggeration, but this is the reality and danger we currently face. If not brothers in life, then brother’s in violent death due to economic collapse leading to a world at war.
It is also well know as articulated by the research of Rummel that democracies do not wage war against each other.
Indur has done it again… there really is no refuting this article… It is the largesse of the west that has made these gains possible…
I remember the day in my university economics class when my professor spoke of how Julian Simon won the famous bet with Paul Ehrlich and John Holdren. We, a group of 2nd year economics students along with our professor laughed and mocked Ehrlich & Holdren’s ignorance as we understood the concepts of energy consumption, utility and scarcity better than they did. It is nothing less than a triumph of ignorance over intelligence that Holdren is now America’s science advisor.
I will add that people who enjoy this article and want to learn more about how modern societies solve so many of the world’s problems should watch much of this: http://www.gapminder.org/.
Once you learn more you will start to see so many of the cracks in the arguments of the environmental group think. It will also become very hard to find an environmental group that actually helps people. We should all work a little harder at spreading the message that we are all for a more healthy happy and sustainable world but we actually know how to get there.
The last statement was a warning against statist and socialist who assume that only by “forcing others to do what “they” feel is right can the world prosper.
The real strgenth of the US is property rights and liberty from oppression by those power groups who think they know best. I have often wandered why some liberal extremist do not personaly raise their own taxes, why they feel that everyone must before they do. In the history of the world never has a country with so much power, exercised as little as the US. Yes, of course there is corruption in democrats, in republicans, in goverment, and in corporations, why? because it is human nature. This is a reason to limit any group / goverment, and this is, or at least was the strength of the US.
The noble side of human nature thrives in liberty and free choice, vitality is lost in goverment control and statis societies.
Gee the petty dictaorships of the world just want their bribe.
He’s carrying on the tradition of Herman Kahn.
Excellent article. Thank you.
Not so long ago, energy consumption was a sign of wealth, the more, the wealthier.
Then this was changed. Developed countries were blamed and blamed themselves for “wasting energy” and causing AGW. Cutting off as only “solution” … and taxes and compensations, of course.
It’s the same pendula mechanism that works in many other cases:
First one extreme, then the other, and truth, means optimum lies somewhere between, where there process stabilizes, sooner or later.
As an engineer, one lesson is obvious:
We can live better AND use less energy.
That’s called “progress”.
Great post. Absolutely correct. Without fossil energy, Man can do very little to improve his (her) lot. This was quite evident before the industrial revolution.
With fossil energy, the situation changes. Here is what I wrote on this on another WUWT thread on March 13 2009, in response to a commenter who stated that skeptics “value our lifestyles more than we value the planet.”
“So, let me just state how my colleagues in various engineering fields, and I to a small extent, have made the globe a safer, healthier, less polluted place, extended life expectancies, and that sort of thing. First, I worked as a chemical engineer in the petroleum and petrochemical industry for 25 years. I am an attorney now, but that is another story.
During those 25 years, I worked first in the chlorine and caustic industry, manufacturing chlorine and sodium hydroxide and hydrogen from salt, water, and electricity. Chlorine is one of modern man’s most important manufactures, valued for its use as a bleach, a cleansing agent, a disinfectant for water, and it greatly improves health all around the world where it is used.
Chlorine is also a major ingredient in plastic, especially PVC and other types of plastic pipe. Such pipe has made plumbing cost-effective in much of the world, greatly improving health. A high-grade of PVC plastic is used extensively in medicine, as an example, to hold a fluid that is fed into a patient’s veins (the IV bag), and the plastic tubing itself. The other major component of plastic comes from petrochemical plants, usually ethylene or propylene.
I cannot even begin to describe the innumerable medicines, drugs, and pharmaceuticals that are made from the petrochemicals we create in the big refineries and petrochemical plants. None of those would be possible if not for the ingenuity of chemists, chemical engineers, and a host of other highly educated and trained professionals.
The overall clean air of this planet is entirely due to petroleum and natural gas. Without them, the population would have choked to death or wheezed in coughing agony during a very short life-span.
Prior to oil use and natural gas, energy was provided by burning coal, and from animal power such as horses, mules, and oxen. The coal smoke and soot, and huge piles of poop left by those animals was a very great problem in cities, and made obsolete by gasoline, diesel, and electric motors. The poop dried, attracted flies, and created toxic dust particles when the wind blew. People inhaled that toxic, polluted air with every breath. But no more, thanks to oil and natural gas.
I could go on and on, describing the very low cost of almost all goods and services due to the extremely cheap energy provided by oil men, the refineries, and power plants. Transportation costs dropped dramatically across the board as trains grew faster, longer, and used less fuel per ton-mile. The same is true for large trucks, and ships.
I could also mention the low cost of food, whether grain or beef, pork, chicken, lamb, or the myriad of fruits and vegetables, all of which are very low-cost as a result of chemistry and chemical plants that produce fertilizers and herbicides. Engineers also design, build, and operate the efficient food processing plants that place low-cost groceries in the stores.
So, I invite you to do some reading, do some research, and find out the facts about what wealth does to improve the plight of the common man. Find out which countries in the world have a long waiting list before being allowing foreigners to enter to work or live or become a citizen. Find out which countries have good medical care, have sanitary water and dispose of waste in a sanitary manner, have sufficient food to eat that does not make the population sicken and die, and sufficient affordable energy to heat and cool their homes to a comfortable level.
I should know. As a chemical engineer, I traveled and worked in more than a dozen countries, from first-world (USA, Europe, Canada, Japan) to third-world (China, East Germany, Poland (pre-demise of Soviet Union), Brazil, Indonesia). I have seen it all, and did my part to improve much of it, along with my colleagues. I have suffered many bouts of intestinal illness in third-world locales.
After you improve your education, then come back and tell me I value my current lifestyle, wealth, over the needs of the planet. As Dr. Thomas Sowell (no relation) of Stanford University’s Hoover Institution has written, increasing prosperity is the only sure and lasting solution to poverty.”
The graph seems to be misleading. For example, it gives the impression that CO2 had increased more than eightfold by 2000.
I go on about this all the time. The truth is manifest but offensive to most. (What does that say about the average human intelligence?) The developing world owes a massive debt to the Western European democracies. I don’t seriously suggest collecting on it but there are at least 2 billion people in the “developing” world who owe their very existence to Western European culture.
What else can we infer from the natural world and all the life therein than forge ahead, in complete self interest (of the individual, sure but humans are a social animal and therefore there self interest is much the same as the interest of the group). Seriously, observe life and tell me that is not the case. Therefore humanity should celebrate its success over the last 100 years and all give thanks to the development of European culture and the extraordinary achievements of its pastey adherents (well, I’m pretty pale and pastey as a “pure” Anglo Celtic, sure wish I had darker skin down here in Australia) in increasing the felicity of the entire human race.
George Gillan (21:12:06) :
The graph seems to be misleading. For example, it gives the impression that CO2 had increased more than eightfold by 2000.
The chart is just for the US, so its plausible that an 8 fold increase has happened. Added to all other emissions globally and averaged out across the globe it would be much smaller. I think.
“there” (sigh).
I seem to have some sort of infection, lately, that swaps my “theres/theirs”. Apologies to all for this egregious slip.
Yes, good, broad summary of how our use of FF has increased our interdependence to everybody’s benefit. With Russian gas powering Europe and Middle eastern oil flowing to every ‘corner’ we certainly need each other and need to be friends with each other.
I have considered that this zealous quest for ‘home-brewed’ energy is a bit of a slap in the face for free trade and mutual interdependence and (so the theory goes),the reduction of conflict due to this global love-in.
Isn’t local renewable power (as minuscule as it is) a slap in the face for free energy trade. It is like a form of protectionism to shun the energy surpluses of another country.
‘Let us stop our dependence on middle eastern oil’ is the common cry………has anybody asked the Saudi’s what they think of this ??, bit of an insult I would think to a good trading partner and friend.
Indur, as always, thank you for your very substantial, rational efforts.
Now it may be argued that I am ignoring the future impacts of climate change which may tilt the balance so that industrialization, instead of being a net positive turns into a net negative.
Well, anything’s possible but as we all should know by now, India and China obviously agree with your assessment and have prospectively judged that their failure to industrialize using fossil fuel would involve a much greater disaster to themselves than the one alleged to result from the associated production of fossil fuel CO2.
And to flog another old horse, in allowing significantly underdeveloped countries containing about 5 billion of the Earth’s ~6.5 billion people to develop through the ad lib use of fossil fuels, even the ipcc has in effect agreed that this kind of industrialization will be a net benefit in comparison to its own otherwise hyped AGW “disaster”.
So apart from the many susceptibles who have simply been caught by the naked unbalanced disasterizing of AGW as a controllist propaganda tactic, and others who think industrialization always has a net negative effect on other species which necessarily trumps all its benefits, or causes an “unacceptable” amount of cancer and other human maladies in spite of its counterbalancing benefits, who’s left who will argue that industrialization has been or will likely become a net negative?
Roger Sowell (20:28:22) :
Great post. Absolutely correct. Without fossil energy, Man can do very little to improve his (her) lot. This was quite evident before the industrial revolution.
Yours was a great post too, Roger, thanks… G